Canadiens Lineup

Cole Caufield – Kirby Dach – Emil Heineman

Evgenii Dadonov – Christian Dvorak – Brendan Gallagher

Joshua Roy – Brandon Gignac – Alex Belzile

Xavier Simoneau – Riley Kidney – Danick Martel

Kaiden Guhle – David Savard

Chris Wideman – Arber Xhekaj

William Trudeau – Mattias Norlinder

Jake Allen – Cayden Primeau

Jake Evans, Sam Montembeault, Joel Armia, Jonathan Drouin, Mitchell Stephens, Joel Teasdale, Otto Leskinen, Jesse Ylonen, Corey Schueneman, Nate Schnarr, Lucas Condotta, Cam Hillis, Owen Beck, Mike Hoffman, Juraj Slafkovsky, Rem Pitlick, Rafael Harvey-Pinard, Filip Mesar, Anthony Richard, Michael Pezzetta, Jan Mysak, Mike Matheson, Justin Barron, Jordan Harris, Gianni Fairbrother

Nick Suzuki (lower-body), Josh Anderson (lower-body), Carey Price (knee), Paul Byron (hip), Joel Edmundson (back), Madison Bowey (day-to-day), Logan Mailloux (shoulder)

Game Report

Are you worried yet? Contrary to some social media commentators, the pre-season does matter. At least to hockey people. Habs management has to be mildly concerned.

It’s not only three losses to open the pre-season but the lack of offence. In three games, Montreal has scored four goals, three via the power-play. While that may be good news for Cole Caufield‘s PP forecast, one even-strength goal in three games for the team should be somewhat alarming.

And it’s not as if the Canadiens have been facing top-tier goaltending along the way. The home team managed just 10 shots in the first 44 minutes of tonight’s contest and that was aided by three power-plays.

Speaking of the man advantage, Montreal got back into this game via a power-play that they probably didn’t deserve. It’s the pre-season for the officials as well. Tonight there was a veteran referee and linesman paired with a linesman in his second campaign and a rookie referee.

The 30-year-old referee is Cody Beach, a fifth round draft pick (134th overall) in the 2010 draft. That was 13 spots ahead of Brendan Gallagher who was tonight’s second star. Beach played 123 games in the AHL where he amassed 495 minutes of penalties.

As far as the rookies in red, tonight’s standouts were Kaiden Guhle and Emil Heineman. In his 18-and-a-half minutes of ice-time, Heineman played seven-and-a-half minutes of power-play time and is looking more comfortable each game.

Guhle had his first goal of the pre-season and led the team with seven hits. It’s fair to say that the 20-year-old defenceman is a lock for the opening night roster.

Up Next

After the game, the Canadiens announced that Joshua Roy and Riley Kidney have been sent back to their respective junior teams in the QMJHL.

The Canadiens have a date in Ottawa on Saturday as they face the Senators at the Canadian Tire Centre.

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